The Problem With Lucy
by Salomedancing
Summary: The problem with Lucy was that she was so stupid. Warnings for mindfuck and references to violence and torture.


**AN: I have a problem with both Lucy and Simm's Master, for me they don't quite gel. Lucy goes from adoring wife to basically catatonic in a year, but we, the audience, aren't given any good explanation for that transformation. Her actions when the Master releases the Toclafane seem rather psychopathic, but if she is that, then she wouldn't break down like does. But why this breakdown if she has always known who the Master was? Mind control seems quite likely, he is using it on the rest of the world after all, but we are never given that explanation. It really annoys me. I really like John Simm as an actor, but I don't think they have written his Master well at all. Both Delgado and Ainley (Roberts I have yet to see) are camp and over the top, but they do it seriously, which I think greatly adds to their menace. Simm's Master has some high points, but overall he is written as either completely crazy or violent in a very mundane way. Not in a Master-worthy way, I suppose I mean. So this fic as I attempt to explain both Lucy and the Master in a way that satisfies at least me.**

The problem with Lucy was that she was so stupid. Everyone said so not least her father. At least you are pretty and can marry well, he used to say, ever since she was a small child and Lucy believed him. He was her father after all. Her boyfriends said the same, at least when they dumped her. Tommy, whom she almost married added that she was a useless shag. That might have been because he was so angry finding out that her father had lost all his money though. She had grown afraid of men and their words by then.

Then Harold came, and he just went up to her and said that he would marry her and he did. She was safe and father was safe and she was holding parties that everyone said was a success and had an unlimited credit card just for her clothes and hairdressers and shoes. Lucy just wanted to make Harold happy, no matter what he did because he took care of her. She followed him in his wake and smiled whatever he did. Even when he destroyed her world.

She was so stupid, she took ages to realise that it was just a show with Earth's terrified people as an audience. All that gleeful madness, the dancing, the flamboyance, it was just all an act, a horrifying circus meant to frighten the world into passivity. It was a show when she said something wrong and he hit her in front of everyone on Valiant. So was the bloody and spectacular execution's of Jack, in front of the cameras. It was camouflage and stupid, stupid Lucy had to go and look for what Harold was hiding underneath, only to find something far worse.

She ought to have seen it long before all that happened. She had seen a glimpse of it when he took her to Utopia. When something inside her had died among the grinding sounds of metal and the heat and the emptiness. When she realised that it didn't matter when you died, or how, because this was where they would end up, no matter what anyone did. She had turned to look at Harold to get some comfort and saw the abyss in his eyes and that something inside her died screaming. She ought to have understood what she would find.

So she saw what the Master did when no one else was around, with the theatrics gone and there was a calm, soft-spoken insanity instead that scared her cold. The things he said and did to Jack that made him scream in real pain that no one ever heard. What he did to poor Tish, when no one was looking, or to her parents. The nights he spent with the Doctor, sitting on the floor with the Doctor's head in his lap talking. He spoke in such a low voice that Lucy could not hear, but she saw the Doctor's face and that was enough.

What the Master did to Lucy when he realised that she was looking. When at long last he shared everything with her. When he invaded her mind with his darkness and his drums, with an ice-cold anger that broke her. She tried to kill herself, but she didn't make it and as punishment he had looked her into her own mind for days, guarded by her own nightmares. After that, she dressed the way he wanted, smiled prettily and tried not to flinch when he demanded of her to play her part in his play.

She stopped sleeping, if no one forced drugs into her and she took to spend those waking hours on the brig, if her husband wasn't there. The Doctor didn't seem to mind her company and one night he explained to her about the Master's mind control.

"He wanted a compliant wife, you know. He made you feel and act in the way he wanted you to feel and act, just as he made the whole Britain vote for him."

She thought it was kind of him to comfort her like that, as she had none to give back in return. "It would be nice if I could use that as an excuse, wouldn't it? But there must have been something inside me for him to spin on."

The Doctor didn't deny that, but he took her hand very gently in his old and wizened one. "We all have things inside us that are dark."

Lucy sighed. "Why doesn't he just kill me? I've no use to him anymore."

"That's the Master's love for you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Lucy."

There was nothing else to do, not really, when she saw the gun on the floor. It had to be her because she was the one who hadn't anything left. When you have already lost everything, then there's nothing left to lose, after all. She rather liked the prison. It was calm there, almost always silent and no one ever called her stupid.

END


End file.
